Mesh bags have been widely used in commercial packaging and storing, laundry as well as sports. More particularly, light weight and heavy duty mesh bags are widely used for packaging and storing fruits, nuts, onions, garlic, and etc. As with other containers of consumer products, labeling is needed to give notice of the brand of the product as well as to convey other relevant information. The prior art's solutions for labeling are inferior to the present invention because they are lacking either in visibility, cost effectiveness or aesthetics.
Prior art labeling methods on tube mesh included stitching the preprinted label on or tying it on. These methods are aesthetically lacking and/or are easily torn off or damaged in transport since they are only attached at one or two edges of the label.
Adhesive preprinted label is an aesthetic improvement since the label is entirely bonded to the mesh bag and does not have portions of the label hanging off the bag or unbounded edges such as the stitched or tied prior art labels. Thus, this type of label is superior to the other prior art methods of labeling tube mesh bags.
Traditionally these adhesive preprinted labels were used only on bags made from sheets of mesh. The sheet of mesh would then need to be sealed on two sides to create an open bag and three sides to form a closed bag. On the other hand, mesh tube could be sealed on one side to form an open bag and two sides to be sealed for a closed bag resulting in lower production costs. If the self adhesive heat activated preprinted labels could be used with tube mesh, then a mesh bag can be made with all the advantages of using adhesive labels, along with the lower costs of using tube mesh.
FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B show a mesh bag according to the prior art, which was made from a sheet of mesh using adhesive labels. The adhesive labels are aesthetically superior to the other prior art labels and their size allows them to be easily read. These labels are primarily used on bags made from sheets of mesh rather than tube mesh since directly pressing the label onto a section of tube mesh would cause the other side of the tube stick to the label as well. But since sheets of mesh were used with this type of label, two sides of the mesh must be sealed to form an open bag. A closed bag would require three sides to be sealed. Each set of seals results in additional cost to the production of the bag.
FIG. 2A shows another prior art, which is a commonly known tube mesh woven cloth with a label printed on it. A vertical fine woven cloth is placed in the woven cloth and texts or graphs will be printed directly to the fine woven cloth. However, since the surface of the woven mesh cloth is uneven, the print would be crude and of low resolution when printing on the woven mesh cloth. Print of such normal quality cannot compete in the ever-competitive era and can't meet the current needs.
Yet FIG. 2B shows another prior art, which is a plastic tube mesh bag manufactured by a typical method of the following steps. The tube mesh cloth is first cut to the needed length. Then, on one end of the cloth, the cloth is folded to form a rim and a line is sewn on it to form the bottom of the bag. Finally, on the other end of the cloth, a sewing machine is used to wrap the edge so that the cutting edge will not come loose. In order to seal the top of the bag, a manual task is needed to insert a drawstring to the top of the bag and tie it. Alternatively, the top of the bag can be folded to form a rim and a drawstring can be inserted into the rim and the rim can be sewed and the drawstring can be then tied. Either way, these manual steps will add a large amount of labor cost to the manufacturing process.
For making woven tube mesh bag, because the opposite sides are folded together, the process used for attaching preprinted labels to the sheets of mesh would not be effective. Due to the characteristics of its mesh pattern, the binding material will permeate to the opposite side and cause two opposite sides to be attached together. Since the two opposite sides cannot be separated, it is also impossible to attach a plastic film containing a drawstring to the woven tube mesh bag. In addition, when heating is applied, plastic woven tube mesh cloth will melt from heat. Therefore, when a heat hole punching process is applied, the opposite sides of the woven tube mesh cloth will stick together, rendering it unusable as a bag.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a machine assembly and process for manufacturing mesh bags from a roll of continuous mesh tube cloth by repeating operations of sewing a line of stitches across the mesh tube and cutting the mesh tube at a predetermined measurement.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a means for attaching preprinted labels to the mesh bags prior to the cutting operation.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a means for attaching a plastic film, a section of plastic film tube including a drawstring therein, or a section of partially carved plastic film tube including a drawstring therein, to the mesh bags prior to the cutting operation.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a means for punching holes on the mesh bags prior to the cutting operation.
What is desired is an easy, fast and low cost process for manufacturing mesh bags from a continuous plastic tube cloth or tube mesh cloth and so that effective and useful products can be manufactured.